Robert Dunn:
HadISD is an integrated station dataset from the Met Office Hadley Centre. It contains over 6000 stations covering the 1973-2014 period, and is planned to be updated annually. Near-surface temperature, dewpoint and sea-level pressure data, along with cloud cover, wind speed and direction have been quality controlled using an automated suite of tests. These tests address many known issues with observational data from individual surface-stations, and have been combined with buddy checks against neighbouring stations in an objective, reproducible and consistent manner.
I will describe our ongoing development and use of this dataset, touching on our assessment of its homogeneity, plans for HadISD version 2 and our communication plan with users; as well as highlighting a number of scientific applications, ranging from individual extreme events to animal welfare.
A complementary dataset, HadEX2, has been developed in collaboration with CCRC-UNSW. This is a dataset of gridded temperature and precipitation extremes indices from 1901-2010. I will outline an assessment we carried out of the structural and parametric uncertainties of this dataset, which showed that the global trends are on the whole robust to choices in the methods used in creating HadEX2.

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Kate Willett:
I’m a Climate Monitoring scientist at the Met Office Hadley Centre and I’d like to give you an overview of my work.
My main job is the development of a global surface humidity monitoring product. This has recently been completed for land only and is now freely available. Development has involved a lengthy process of quality control, conversion across variables, homogenisation, uncertainty estimation and gridding. We’ve recently been able to begin analysis to try and understand how the world is getting warmer and wetter (in terms of water vapour), but drier, relatively. Comparison with global climate models shows considerable disagreement for the recent historical record.
My other job involves trying to improve the world of surface temperature data to meet the needs of 21st Century climate science. The International Surface Temperature Initiative has released its first version databank of monthly land surface temperature data. This is the largest archive of freely available monthly land meteorological data with version control and traceability to source where possible. I lead the ISTI’s benchmarking working group. We are busy trying to synthetically replicate the 32000+ stations so that we can benchmark test our climate data processing methods.
Finally, there is the annual State of the Climate report to be done. I coordinate the global climate chapter. We assess a wide array of Essential Climate Variables each year, in the context of the historical record. The signal of climate change is clear from the deep oceans to the top of the atmosphere.

The potential for seasonal forecasting of thunderstorms has not previously been examined for any region of the world. Convective available potential energy (CAPE), as an indicator of conditions favourable to thunderstorm formation, is found to be significantly related to the El Niñouthern Oscillation (ENSO) on seasonal time scales throughout many regions of the world. This indicates the potential to produce seasonal forecasts of thunderstorms (and perhaps associated impacts such as heavy rainfall, hail, strong winds, tornados, lightning and fires). The relationship between thunderstorm activity (based on satellite lightning data) and ENSO shows strong similarities to the relationship between CAPE and ENSO in terms of its seasonal and spatial variability throughout the world. Maps are presented of anomalous thunderstorm activity for different phases of ENSO (El NiñNeutral and La Niñfor each season of the year. In addition to ENSO, a number of other large-scale modes of atmospheric and oceanic variability are examined in relation to thunderstorm occurrence, with ENSO having the strongest relationship with thunderstorm activity for all cases examined.

Lightning is a significant ignition source for a large proportion of the area burnt by fires throughout the world. The strong relationships between thunderstorm activity and large-scale atmospheric modes of variability suggests the possibility of developing a coarse-scale method for indicating the risk of lightning occurrence (i.e. coarse in spatial and temporal scales, suitable for application to global climate models). A range of atmospheric variables associated with thunderstorm occurrence are examined (based on reanalyses) in relation to global lightning stroke data obtained from a network of ground-based sensors. Rainfall data (from TRMM) are used to categorise the lightning as 'dry' or 'wet' based on the amount of rainfall accompanying the lightning. A discussion of the interactions between lightning and fire occurrence is presented.

Areas that are particularly poorly represented in GCMs are the tropical coastal regions. Therefore this study develops and applies an algorithm to objectively identify coast line affected precipitation. Pattern-recognition techniques are applied to the data to determine the occurrence and intensity of coastline-affected rainfall features. The effects of changing parameters in the algorithm are investigated. Having identified precipitation associated with coastlines, its climatological features and diurnal behaviour are studied. We find that a significant percentage of rainfall in tropical and sub-tropical coastal areas results from coastline effects. Furthermore the results suggest that major modes of climate variability, such as the Madden-Julia-Oscillation and the El Niñouthern Oscillation have a strong effect on the existence of coastal precipitation features. We also identify large-scale variables favouring coastal precipitation and find that the large-scale state for detected rainfall differs from from the large-scale state for non-detected rainfall.

The CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology have updated information about observed climate variability in Australia and projected changes over the 21st century. The projections are based on up to 40 of the latest climate model simulations, with confidence ratings for different variables, consistent with methods used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). This supersedes information released by CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology in 2007. Emphasis has been placed on providing projections data and information for use in planning and risk assessment within the natural resource management (NRM) sector. This research was funded by the Department of the Environment through the Planning for Climate Change Fund and is supported by co-funding from CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology. Four IPCC scenarios of greenhouse gas and aerosol emissions have been considered. The lower scenarios assume significant reductions in emissions, and lead to slower rates of climate change. The higher scenarios lead to faster climate change, and a greater range of possibilities for variables such as temperature, rainfall and sea level. This talk will present an overview of the project outcomes and key messages.

This study investigates the role of large-scale circulation shifts, induced by
Indo-Pacific Sea Surface Temperature (SST) patterns, during heavy summer
monsoon rainfall of 2010 over Indo-Pak region. The evolution of monsoon
synoptic systems and mid-latitude atmospheric blocking associated with the
heavy precipitation and floods over northwest Pakistan during strong La Nina
event of 2010 has been investigated by several past studies. The anomalous westward
shift of west-Pacific sub-tropical high, suppression of convection over Bay of
Bengal and anomalous northward moisture transport from Arabian Sea inspired us
to diagnose the role of remote and regional SST boundary forcings on the
modulation of large-scale circulation over Indo-Pacific region.

The realistic response of observed SSTs in simulating 2010 Indo-Pak heavy
rainfall anomalies, using a high resolution Atmospheric General Circulation
Model, developed at the Laboratoire de Meteorologie Dynamique (LMDZ4; Z stands
for zoom; from France), is intriguing. This realistic simulation response
encouraged us to diagnose the distinct roles of Indian Ocean and Pacific SST
anomalies by conducting additional simulation experiments using ENSO-related
and ENSO-unrelated forcings.

A PDF copy of all the presented seminars can be found at the "Find Seminar Presentation Documents..." link at the top of the page (available to BoM staff only). Seminars for previous years can be found at the "Goto list of BMRC seminars for ..." site at the top of the page. In addition, a list of actual videos from some previous seminars is held in the library and can be found on the
catalogue by entering Series: BMRC, Format:Video. If you would like to have a talk videotaped please contact the
seminar coordinator. Note: as of 2005, it is standard practice for all seminars to be recorded as wmv movies,
with the permission of the presenter.

If you would like to know more details of coordinating seminars (if, for example,
you are hosting a visitor who will be giving a seminar and the regular seminar coordinator is not available),
have a look at the document, "Instructions for CAWCR Seminar Coordinator"